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Old House

<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</h2> Winter came many times. Summer came many times. The children did not count them. Meanwhile an iron chain bridge had grown together from the two banks of the Danube. Even when the ice was drifting it was not taken to pieces; it was beautiful and remained there all the year. The Town Council had planted rows of trees along the streets. Oil lamps burnt in the streets at nightfall and the Ulwing house no longer stood alone on the shore. The value of the ground owned by the great carpenter had soared. Walls grew up from the sand. Streets started on the waste land, stopped, went on again. Work, life, houses, brick-built houses, everywhere. Everything changed; only Ulwing the builder remained the same. His clever eyes remained sharp and clear. He walked erect on the scaffoldings, in the office, in the timber yard. He was a head taller than anybody else. They feared him at the Town Hall and the contractors hated him. He quietly went on buying and building and gradually the belief became a common superstition that everything the great carpenter touched turned into gold. Indoors, in the quiet safe well-being of the[Pg 41] house, the marble clock continued to tick monotonously, but the children had long ago lost the belief that it was a lame dwarf who hobbled through the rooms. For a long time Christopher had even realized that there were no fairies. His grandfather had told him so. He shouted at him and took him by the shoulders: “Do you hear, little one, there are no fairies to help us. Only weaklings expect miracles, the strong perform miracles.” Little Christopher often remembered his grandfather killing his fairies. What a terrible, superior being he seemed to be! He felt like crying; if there were no fairies, he wondered, what filled the darkness, the water of the well, the flames? What lived in them? And while he searched in bewilderment his eyes seemed to snatch for support like the hands of a drowning man. He grew resigned, however, and called the “world’s end” the timber yard, just like any grown-up. Under his rarely moving eyelids his pale eyes would look indifferently into the air. Only his voice showed signs of disillusion whenever he imitated his seniors and spoke in their language of doings once dear to him. The years passed by and the magic cave under the wall of the courtyard became a ditch, the terrifying iron gate an attic door and the stove fairies ordinary flames. The piano mice too came to an end. When a string cracked now and[Pg 42] then in the house, Christopher opened his eyes widely and stared into the darkness which had become void to him. “Anne, are you asleep?” “Yes, long ago.” “I had such a funny dream ... of a girl. She raised her arms and leaned back.” “Go to sleep.” Before Christopher’s eyes the darkness (forsaken by dwarfs and fairies since he had given up believing in them) became incomprehensibly populated. He saw the girl of whom he had dreamt, her face, her body too. She was tall and slender, her bosom rigid, she lifted both her arms and twisted her hair like a black mane round her head. Just like the sister of Gabriel Hosszu before the looking-glass when he peeped at her last Sunday through the keyhole. “Anne....” The boy listened with his mouth open. Everything was silent in the house. Suddenly he pulled the blanket over his head. He began to tell stories to himself. He told how the King wore a golden crown and lived up on the hill in a white castle. It was never dark in the castle, tallow candles burnt all the night. His bed was guarded by slaves, slaves did his lessons for him, slaves brought a dark-eyed princess to him. Chains rattled on the princess. “Take them off!” he commanded. “You are free.” The princess knelt down at his feet and asked what[Pg 43] she should give him for his pardon. “Take your hair down and twist it up again,” he said, said it quite simply and smiled. And the princess took her hair down many times and many times twisted it up again.... He fell asleep and still he smiled. He got into the way of dreaming stories. If, while day-dreaming, somebody addressed him unexpectedly, it made him jump and blush, as though caught in the act of doing wrong. Then he would run to his school books and try hard to do some work. He learned with ease; once read, his lesson was learnt, but he could not fix his attention for any time. Instead of that, he drew fantastic castles, girls and long-eared cats on the margins of his copy book. While he was thus engaged, his conscience was painfully active and reminded him incessantly that he was expected to study the reign of King Béla III or the course of the tributaries of the Danube. Perspiration appeared upon his brow. In his terror he could not do his work. Every boy up to the letter U had already been called up in school and he was sure that his turn would come next day. As he had expected, he was questioned and knew nothing. A fly buzzed in the air. He felt as though it buzzed within his head. The boys laughed. Gabriel Hosszu prompted aloud, Adam Walter held his book in front of him, the master scolded. But, when the year came to an end, nobody dared to plough the grandson of[Pg 44] Ulwing the builder. Christopher began to perceive that some invisible power protected him everywhere. The master told him the questions of the coming examination. For a few coloured marbles Gabriel Hosszu prompted him in Latin. For a half penny little Gál, the hunchback, did his arithmetic homework. “Things end by coming all right,” thought Christopher, when the terrifying thought of school intruded while he drew cats or modelled clay men in the garden instead of doing his homework. “That boy can do anything he likes,” said old Ulwing, delighted with Christopher’s drawings, and locked them carefully away in one of the many drawers of his writing-table. This frightened Christopher. What did the grown-up people want to do with him? He lost his pleasure in drawing and gave up modelling clay men in the courtyard. He became envious of Anne. She had little to learn and nobody expected great things from her. About this time Anne began to feel lonely. Her bewildered eyes seemed in search of explanations. She grew fast and her silvery fair hair became darker as if something had cast a shadow over it. Mrs. Füger pushed her spectacles up into the starched frills of her bonnet and looked at her attentively. “Just now you held your head exactly as your[Pg 45] mother used to. Dear good Mrs. Christina!” Hearing this, Anne, who stood in the middle of the back garden, leaned her head still more sideways. However, it puzzled her that a person who was still a child could possibly resemble somebody who was so very old as to have gone to heaven. Mrs. Füger smiled strangely. In her old mind, Anne’s mother, who had died young, could not age and remained for ever so; while this young girl, who had no memory of her mother, thought of her as incredibly old. “Mrs. Christina was sixteen years old when young Mr. Ulwing asked Ulrich Jörg for her hand. Sixteen years old. When she came here she brought dolls with her too. She would have liked to play battledore and shuttlecock with her husband in the garden. Every evening she would slip in here and ask me to tell her stories.” As if she had been called, Anne ran across Mrs. Henrietta’s threshold. The house smelt of freshly scrubbed boards. Many preserve bottles stood in a row on the top of the wardrobe. Now and then, the cracking of a dry parchment cover would interrupt the silence. Anne crouched down on a footstool and surveyed the room. It was full of embroidery. “Keys” was embroidered in German character on the keyboard, “Sleep well” on a cushion and “Brushes” on a bag. “The Fügers must be very absent-minded people,” mused the little girl; “it is obvious what all[Pg 46] these things are meant for, and yet they have to label them.” Mrs. Henrietta sighed. She could sigh most depressingly. When she did so, her nostrils dilated and she shut her eyes. “Many a time did Mrs. Christina sit here and make me tell her ghost stories. She loved to be frightened—like a child. She was afraid of everything: of moths, of the cracking of the furniture, of the master’s voice, of ghosts. At night she did not dare to cross the garden; Leopoldine had to take her hand and go with her.” “Leopoldine? Who was she?” “My daughter.” Mrs. Füger’s eyes wandered over a picture hanging on the wall of the bay window. It represented a grave with weeping willows, made of hair, surrounded by an inscription in beads: “Love Eternal.” “Is she in heaven too?” “No. Never mention her. Füger has forbidden it.” “Why?” “Children must not ask questions.” “Mamsell always gives the same answer and says God will whisper to me what I ought to know. But God never whispers to me.” “Mrs. Christina talked just like that. She too wanted to know everything. When the maids cast fortunes with candle drippings she was for ever listening to their talk. Then she blushed, laughed and sang and played the piano. Then[Pg 47] the men in the timber yard stopped work.” Anne drew her knees up to her chin. “Could she sing too?” Mrs. Füger made a sign of rapture. “Sing? That was her very life. She entered this place like a song, and left it like one. It rang through the house and before we could grasp it, it was gone.” The little girl did not hear the old lady’s last words. She was gone and suddenly found herself in her mother’s room. She knelt down on the small couch. There hung on the wall the portrait, which she had always seen, but which she now examined for the first time. The delicate water-colour represented a girl who seemed a mere child. She looked sweet and timid. Her auburn hair, parted by a shining line in the middle, was gathered by a large comb on the top of her head like a bow; ringlets fell on the side of her face. The childish outline of her shoulders emerged from a low-cut dress. Her hand held a rose gracefully in an uncomfortable position. Anne felt that if she came back she could talk to her about many things of which Mamsell and all the others seemed ignorant. She thought of the daughters of Müller the apothecary, of the Jörgs and the Hosszu families, Gál the little hunchback, of the son of Walter the wholesale linen-draper, the Münster children. All had mothers. Everybody—only she had none. [Pg 48] And then, like a cry of distress, she spoke a word, but so gently that she did not hear it, just felt it shape itself between her lips. Nearer and nearer she bent to the picture and now she did hear in the silence her own faint, veiled voice say the word which one cannot pronounce without bestowing a repeated kiss on one’s lips in uttering it: “Mamma!” She turned suddenly round. Something like a feeling of shame came over her for talking aloud when there was nobody in the room, nothing but a ray of the sun on the piano. Anne slid down from the couch and opened the piano. It was dusty. She stroked a key with her little finger. An unexpected sound rose from the instrument, a warm clear sound like the flare of a tinder box. It died down suddenly. She struck another key; another flare. She drew her hand over many keys; many flares, quite a din. She put her head back and stared upwards as if she saw the flaring little flames of the notes. Somebody stroked her face. Her father. “Would you like to learn to play the piano?” She did not answer. It was without learning that she would have liked to play and to sing, so beautifully that even the men in the timber yard would lay down their work. John Hubert became thoughtful. “All the Jörgs were fond of music. Music was the very life of your mother.” [Pg 49] Gently Anne opened her blue eyes with a green glitter in them. “Yes,” she said with determination, “I want to learn.” Next day, a gentleman of solemn appearance came to the house; his name was Casimir Sztaviarsky. He was at that time the most fashionable dancing and music master in town. He wore a coal-black wig, he walked on the tip of his toes, he balanced his hips and received sixpence per hour. He mentioned frequently that he was a descendant of Polish kings. When he was angry he spoke Polish. After her lessons, Anne learned many things from him. Sztaviarsky spoke to her about Chopin, the citizens’ choir in Pest, Mozart, grandfather Jörg who played the ’cello well and played the organ on Sundays in the church of the Franciscan friars. The little girl began to be interested in her grandfather Jörg to whom she had not hitherto paid much attention. He was different from the Ulwings. The children thought him funny and often looked at each other knowingly behind his back while he was rubbing his hands and bowing with short brisk nods to the customers of his bookshop. Anne blushed for him. She did not like to see him do this and her glance fell on grandfather Ulwing. He did not bow to anybody. Ulrich Jörg’s bookshop was at the corner of[Pg 50] Snake Street. A seat was fixed in the wall near the entrance in front of which an apple tree grew in the middle of the road. The passing carriages drove round it with much noise. Anne thrust her head in at the door. Ulwing the builder removed his wide-brimmed grey beaver. The perfume of the apple-blossom filled the shop. Grandfather Jörg came smiling to meet them; he emerged with short steps from behind a bookcase which, reaching up to the ceiling, divided the shop into two from end to end. The front part was used by ordinary customers. Behind the bookcase, shielded from the view of the street, some gentlemen sat, mostly in Magyar costumes, on a sofa near a tallow candle and conversed hurriedly, continuously. They were more numerous than usual. A young man, wearing a dolman, sat in the middle on the edge of the writing table. His neck stretched bare from his soft open shirt collar. His hair was uncombed, his eyes were wonderfully large and aflame. For the first time in her life Anne realized how beautiful the human eye could be. Then she noticed, however, that the young man’s worn-out boots were battering the brass fittings of Grandfather Jörg’s writing table while he was speaking and that his disorderly movements upset everything within his reach. She thought him wanting in respect. So she returned to the other side[Pg 51] of the bookcase and resumed the reading of the book her grandfather had chosen for her. It was about a Scotch boy called Robinson Crusoe. More people came to the shop. Nobody bought a book. And even the old men looked as if they were still young. The feverish, clumsy man behind the bookcase went on talking and at times one could hear the heels of his boots knock against the brass fittings. Anne did not pay any attention to what he said. The book fascinated her. One word, however, did reach her ears several times from behind. But the word did not penetrate her intellect. It just remained a repeated sound. In the middle of the shop stood a gentleman. He had a bony face and he wore a beard only under his chin. And from the pocket of his tight breeches a beribboned tobacco pouch dangled. The man next to him urged him on. “You can speak out, we are among ourselves.” The man with a bony face showed a manuscript. “I have searched in vain since this morning. People are afraid for their skins. There is not a printer in Pest who dares set up this proclamation.” Ulrich Jörg leaned over the paper. His bald head reflected the light and the wreath of yellowish white hair round his ear moved in a funny way. “This is not a proclamation,” somebody whispered. “This means revolution!” [Pg 52] Ulrich Jörg stretched out his hand. “My printing works will see this through.” He said this so quietly and simply, that Anne could not understand why all these gentlemen should throng suddenly round him. But when she cast her eyes on him, he no longer looked funny. His small eyes glittered under the white eyelashes and his face resembled that of St. Peter in her little Bible. Two boys rushed past the door. With shrill voices they shouted: “Freedom!” Anne recognised the word she had heard from behind the bookcase. Mere boys clamoured for it too. How simple! Everybody wanted the same thing. Freedom! Somehow it seemed to her that there was some connection between that word and another. Youth! And yet another. Whatever was it? She thought of the awkward youth’s feverish eye. From the direction of the Town Hall people came running down the street; artisans, women, students, servants. The actors of the German theatre were among them too. Anne recognised the robber-knight and the queen. The queen’s petticoat was torn. “Hurray for the freedom of the press. Down with the censor!” Ulwing the builder, who till then had seemed indifferent, nodded emphatically. He thought of the censor at Buda, then he could not help smiling to himself: from what a small angle does[Pg 53] man contemplate the world, the world that is so wide! The pavement resounded with many hurried steps. More people came. They too were running, gesticulating wildly, colliding with each other. All of a sudden, a voice became audible outside, a voice like that of spring, penetrating the air irresistibly. Somebody spoke. The bookshop became silent. The men rose. The voice came to fetch them. The windows of the houses on the other side of the street were opened. The voice penetrated the dwellings of the German burghers. It filled the stuffy rooms, the mouldy shops, the streets, and whatever it touched caught fire. This voice was the music of a conflagration. Christopher Ulwing went to the door. He stopped at the threshold. Behind him the whole shop began to move. Men thronged beside him into the street. Ulrich Jörg hurried with short, fast steps side by side with the big-headed shop assistant. All ran. The builder too, unable to resist, began to run. From the street he shouted back to Anne: “You stay there!” The bookshop had become empty and the little girl looked anxiously around; then, as if listening to music, she leaned her head against the door-post. She could not see the speaker, he was far away. Only the sound of his voice reached her[Pg 54] ear, yet she felt that what now happened was strangely new to her. A delightful shudder rippled down her back. The voice made her feel giddy, it rocked her, called her, carried her away. She did not resist but abandoned herself to it and little Anne Ulwing was unconsciously carried away by the great Hungarian spring which had now appealed to her for the first time. When the invisible voice died away, the crowd raised a shout. A student began to sing at the top of his voice in front of the shop. All at once, the song was taken up by the whole street, a song which Anne was to hear often in days to come. The student climbed the apple tree nimbly and waved his hat wildly. His face was aflame; the branches swayed under his weight and the white blossoms covered the pavement. Anne would have liked to wave her handkerchief. She longed to sing like the student. General, infinite happiness was floating in the air. People embraced and ran. “Freedom!” A quaint figure approached down the street. He crawled along the walls with careful, hesitating steps. He stopped every now and then and looked anxiously around. His purple tail-coat fluttered ridiculously, white stockings fell in thick folds over buckled shoes. Anne felt embarrassed, afraid. She had never yet seen Uncle Sebastian like this in the street, in Pest. Involuntarily, she shrank behind the[Pg 55] door. “Perhaps he won’t see me. Perhaps he will walk on....” And the thought of the feverish eyes, and the word she had connected with youth.... And the voice.... Uncle Sebastian was so old and so far away. Anne cast her eyes down while the rusty buckles of a pair of clumsy shoes came slowly nearer and nearer on the pavement. The student in the tree roared with laughter. “What sort of scarecrow is this? What olden times are a-walking?” Anne became sad and tears rose to her eyes. “He is mine!” She sobbed in despair and opened her arms towards the old man. Uncle Sebastian had noticed nothing of all this. He sat down on the bench in front of the bookshop, put his hat on the ground and wiped his forehead for a long time with his enormous gaudy handkerchief. “I just came here in time. What an upheaval! What are we coming to! What will be the end of this?” Again Anne felt a wide gulf between herself and the old man, and she moved all the closer up to him so that people who laughed at Uncle Sebastian might know that they belonged together. <hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> [Pg 56] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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